Penelope was originally from this world she is in now, had her soul cursed to be hated by everyone in every new life when she was killed by a malignant deity she managed to defeat(she was once a powerful magician. I think it was a case of mutual destruction between her and the deity, but I'm not sure), reincarnated into a world like ours(another magician close to her caused her to reincarnate into our world in an attempt to save her from the curse), and then reincarnated again back into her original world now that the curse is gone. As a result, everyone that treated her like shit due to the curse are slowly calming down and realizing they did horrible things to her for seemingly no reason(no one knows a curse was involved...yet). The only people who haven't been affected by the curse since they didn't associate with Penelope when she was still cursed are the crown prince, Vinter, and Iklies, so all of their reactions to her are genuine and have to do with their own personal circumstances(the prince is just super paranoid due to all the shit he's gone through and assumes everyone is out to get him or deceive him).